Tuesday, 2 May: World Asthma Day

On the initiative of WHO, World Vaccination Week is the opportunity to raise public awareness of the vital importance of vaccination throughout life.

The number of children in the world who are not vaccinated or are inadequately vaccinated is 19.4 million, according to WHO.

In France, the latest data from the Institute of Health Monitoring (InVS) indicate that in children, there is vaccination coverage of 91% against diphtheria, tetanus, polio and whooping cough. With regard to vaccination coverage of Measles, Mumps, Rubella (MMR), it is only 72% in children of 24 months.

To understand the individual and collective challenges of vaccination, in partnership with Muscadier publications, Inserm has published an educational manual explaining the function of vaccines, their role and their benefits but also their limits:

“Vaccination: Agression or Protection? “, in the Choc Santé collection, edited by Annick Guimenazes, an Inserm researcher at the Marseille-Luminy Centre of Immunology (CIML) and Marion Mathieu, Doctor of Biology and engineer at ESPCI-ParisTech.

The recent occurrence of epidemics and pandemics – the Ebola epidemic in West Africa and that of Zika in the Americas, have highlighted the urgency of developing vaccines, by creating innovative partnerships between the different participants in global vaccine research.

For Yves Lévy, Chairman and CEO of Inserm: “The Ebola epidemic proved that we can develop vaccines quickly in extremely difficult conditions. It also proved that one of the keys to success is the willingness of all those involved to work hand in hand.”

Inserm, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, LSHTM, in collaboration with the health authorities of Guinea and Liberia, have launched a new clinical trial on the Ebola vaccine candidates, under the aegis of the PREVAC (Partnership for Research on Ebola VACcination) international consortium.